Juice treatment
Juice settling
Letting freshly pressed juice stand cold and undisturbed so that gross solids fall, then racking the cleaner juice off the deposit before pitching.
Known as débourbage where it originates. Also called Débourbage, Cold settling, Standing the juice.
- Stage
- Juice treatment
- Traditional in
- Normandy, Pays d’Auge, Domfrontais
- What it most changes
- Fermentation character down, freshness up
- Safety
- None recorded
What it is
Juice leaving a press carries a substantial load of coarse material: fragments of skin and flesh, cell-wall debris, soil and grit that survived washing, starch granules from underripe fruit, and precipitated protein and phenolic matter. Settling is the simplest possible response — hold the juice cold and still for a period, let gravity do the separation, then rack the clean juice off the bourbes at the bottom. No enzyme, no fining agent, no machine. It is the oldest juice treatment there is and remains the default for makers who want a partial clean-up without committing to full clarification.
Why it is used
- Gross lees are the fraction most likely to carry off-flavour into the ferment: grit, mould-affected tissue and oxidised debris contribute earthy and mouldy notes that no later treatment removes.
- Fermenting on a heavy solids load raises the risk of hydrogen sulphide, because settled solids create locally reduced, nutrient-depleted pockets in which yeast under stress produces sulphide.
- Starch granules from fruit picked before starch conversion completes will pass into the cider and cause a haze that appears weeks later; much of that load drops out during a cold stand.
- It costs nothing but tank time and cold, which makes it available to producers at any scale, including those who have no filter and no centrifuge.
How it works
- Separation is Stokes settling: a particle falls at a rate governed by its size, its density difference from the juice, and the juice’s viscosity, so the coarse dense material goes first and the fine colloidal fraction may never go at all.
- Cold helps twice over — it slows every microbial and enzymic process that would otherwise start a ferment before separation is complete, and by raising viscosity only modestly while suppressing convection currents it keeps the settled bed undisturbed.
- Some of what settles is not simply suspended solid but material formed in the vessel: oxidised phenolic polymers condensing with protein, and protein–tannin complexes coming out of solution as the juice stands.
- Sulphiting is often paired with settling not to clarify but to buy the time, holding the wild flora back long enough that gravity gets a clear run before fermentation begins.
- Racking is the operative step; leaving juice sitting on its gross lees for too long reverses the benefit as the deposit begins to break down and release what it captured.
What it changes
The direction this step pushes the finished drink in, dimension by dimension. A direction, not a measurement: how far it moves depends on the juice, the temperature and how the step is carried out.
| Dimension | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fermentation character | Lowers | Removing the solids that create reduced micro-environments in the lees bed cuts sulphidic and coarse fermentation notes at their source. |
| Freshness | Raises | Coarse debris carries earthy and vegetal material that muddies the aromatic top of a cider; taking it out leaves the fruit-derived volatiles more exposed. |
The chemistry and the organisms
What is actually being changed, and by what. Each entry says what that compound or organism does in cider generally; this page is one place it does it.
Compounds involved
Pectin
The structural polysaccharide of fruit cell walls, which decides how much juice a press releases, whether a cider ever clears, and whether keeving is possible at all.
Starch
The fruit’s carbohydrate store, unfermentable until ripening converts it to sugar, and the reason picking early costs alcohol and risks a haze that will not clear.
Total phenolics
The single number used to summarise everything phenolic in a juice, useful for comparing fruit and misleading whenever it is used to predict how a cider will taste.
Sulphur dioxide
The antimicrobial and antioxidant on which most modern cidermaking depends, and whose effectiveness collapses as pH rises — which makes every sulphiting decision a pH decision first.
Where it is traditional
The places this step belongs to as a matter of practice. It is not a claim of exclusivity — a method can be traditional in one region and perfectly ordinary in another.
What it is done with
Juice reception and settling tanks
A reception tank takes juice as fast as the press makes it so the rest of the plant can work at its own pace, and a settling tank then holds it still and cold while the gross solids fall — the cheapest clarification available to anyone.
Heat exchangers and chilling the juice
A heat exchanger puts two liquids either side of a thin wall so heat crosses and the liquids do not mix; in a cider house the same machine chills warm press juice, holds a tank at temperature, and carries out flash pasteurisation.
What can go wrong
Faults that begin at this step, or that this step makes more likely. Each one is set out with its causes and whether it can be put right.
Starch haze
A persistent haze caused by starch carried in from under-ripe fruit, which has not yet been converted to sugar and stays suspended in the cider.
Hydrogen sulphide
A rotten-egg or drain smell from hydrogen sulphide produced by stressed yeast, usually the first visible consequence of a nitrogen-short juice.
Mould taint
Musty, earthy, cellar-damp or rotten-fruit character carried in from mouldy fruit or from mouldy equipment, and a marker that the patulin question needs asking.
Excessive sediment
More deposit in the bottle or vessel than the presentation intends, ranging from a normal conditioning yeast layer to a loose sludge that clouds every pour.
Sluggish fermentation
A fermentation that is still moving but far more slowly than it should, extending the period during which the cider is weak, sweet and exposed.
Protein haze
A fine haze that forms as protein and tannin combine into insoluble complexes, often appearing in a cider that had already been clear.
Styles it produces
Categories in which this step is characteristic or required. Some name it in their definition; for others it is simply how they have always been made.
Cidre de Normandie
Protected Normandy cider made from the region’s bitter and bittersweet fruit, characteristically low in alcohol, sweet-edged and lightly sparkling.
Keeved cider
Cider clarified before fermentation by a pectin gel that strips nutrients from the juice, producing a slow ferment that stops naturally with sugar still in solution.
Still perry
Perry without carbonation, in which the fruit’s sorbitol sweetness and its texture carry a drink that has no bubble to lean on.
Cidre de Bretagne
Protected Breton cider, built on a distinct western fruit inventory and generally drier, lighter and more acid-led than its Norman counterpart.
Cidre doux
The sweet tier of the French cider scale, defined since 2025 by a density at or above 1.024 together with an acquired strength no greater than 3% vol, so that the sweetness is demonstrably unfermented juice sugar.
Tasmanian cider
Cider from Tasmania, whose cool maritime climate and long apple-growing history give fruit with the acid that most Australian districts cannot hold.
Unfiltered cider
Cider packaged without filtration, retaining suspended yeast and fine solids and the body and aroma that come with them.
More on juice settling
Settling asks nothing of the maker except patience and, usually, cold. The mechanism is entirely physical: particles denser than the juice fall at a rate set by their size, and because that rate scales with the square of the diameter, the coarse fraction is gone in hours while the fine colloidal fraction would take longer than anyone has. This is why settling is a partial operation by nature. It removes gross lees. It does not produce a bright juice, and a maker who expects it to will be disappointed. What comes off the top is a juice that is visibly cleaner and still distinctly cloudy, which for a great many ciders is precisely the target.
The French term débourbage is worth keeping because it names the thing accurately — removing the bourbes, the muddy bottom — rather than promising clarity. In Normandy the cold stand is not an isolated step but the front end of the keeving sequence, where the juice is deliberately held cool and low in nutrient so that the pectin gel has time to form before fermentation gets going. English and North American practice more often treats it as a standalone clean-up, and in warm-autumn regions it is frequently impossible without refrigeration, because the wild flora will start the ferment before gravity has finished. That constraint, not preference, explains much of why some producers settle and others go straight to the fermenter.
The decisions a practitioner actually makes are how cold, how long, and whether to sulphite to hold the ferment off. Too short a stand and the point is lost. Too long, and the settled bed begins to autolyse and degrade, releasing sulphury and vegetal material back into the juice it had just been cleaned of — a juice left standing on gross lees for a week at cellar temperature can end up worse than one racked immediately. Racking technique matters as much as the wait: drawing off too greedily and disturbing the bed undoes the separation in a moment, which is why a fixed racking valve set above the floor of the vessel is worth more than any amount of care with a siphon.
Related processes
Steps that sit alongside this one, replace it, or depend on it having been done.
Juice treatment
Juice clarification
The deliberate use of enzyme, fining agents or mechanical separation to produce a bright juice before fermentation, and what that costs the ferment.
Juice treatment
Sulphiting
Adding sulphur dioxide to juice to suppress spoilage organisms and oxidative browning, at a level that only means anything once the juice pH is known.
Fermentation
Keeving
Forming a floating pectin gel that lifts nutrients and solids out of the juice, so that the ferment starves before it finishes and leaves natural sweetness behind.
Maturation
Racking
Moving cider off the sediment it has thrown, which both cleans the liquid and — by taking yeast and nitrogen away with the deposit — slows what is left of the ferment.
Juice treatment
Juice storage
Holding unfermented juice sound between pressing and fermentation, by chilling, sulphiting, gas blanketing, freezing or aseptic filling.
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- What is keeving — Keeving is a technique for starving a ferment of nitrogen so that it stops before all the sugar is gone, leaving a naturally sweet cider. Pectin is made to gel and float as a brown cap, carrying nutrients and yeast out of the juice with it.
- What is racking in cider making — Racking is siphoning cider off the sediment it has thrown into a clean vessel, leaving the lees behind. It clarifies the cider and, in traditional practice, is also used to slow a ferment by removing yeast with the lees.
- Why is sulphite added to cider — Sulphur dioxide suppresses spoilage bacteria and wild yeast before fermentation and protects the finished cider from oxidation. How much of it is active depends strongly on pH, which is why low-acid juice is harder to protect.
- Does cider contain sulphites — Most does. Sulphur dioxide is added to protect juice and finished cider, and fermentation itself produces a small amount even when none is added. European labels must declare it above 10 mg per litre.
- How do i get rid of the sulphur smell in my cider — Racking with a little splashing usually blows off free hydrogen sulphide while it is still fresh. Once it has reacted into mercaptans the smell becomes rubbery and no longer responds to aeration.
- What does pectin do in cider — Pectin is the structural polysaccharide that holds fruit cells together. In juice it holds haze in suspension, and it is the molecule keeving depends on: strip its methyl groups and it will gel with calcium and float the nutrients out of the juice.
Where to go next
- How cider is made — The whole sequence, stage by stage, with the choices open at each one.
- Cider science — The chemistry and microbiology the methods on this page rest on.
- Troubleshooting — What goes wrong, how to recognise it, and whether it can be reversed.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
The New Cider Maker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Craft Producers
Claude Jolicoeur, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013. ISBN 9781603584739 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against the Open Library union catalogue: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9781603584739, one edition recorded. That establishes the citation points at a real book in a stated edition, which is what a citation needs and is all it establishes. No copy was opened and nothing is quoted from it. The book itself is in print and not digitised in any open collection; where CiderHQ needs a figure from this territory it uses an accessible research source instead and says so.
Cider and perry production technical training material
Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject
Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.
Institut Français des Productions Cidricoles (IFPC)
IFPC · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The French technical institute for cider production. The authority for the French cultivar classification families, for keeving as an industrial process, and for the pectin and nitrogen chemistry that keeving depends on.